Isaac Stern
Modern Music for Violin

* Hindemith: Sonata for Violin and Piano (1939) (mono)
* Bloch:
           Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano
           Baal Shem: Three Pictures of Chassidic Life
* Copland: Sonata for Violin and Piano*

Isaac Stern (violin), Alexander Zakin (piano), Aaron Copland* (piano)
London 443776-2 Total time: 62:15

Summary for the Busy Executive: Maddeningly inconsistent.

Volume 28 in Sony's retrospective on Isaac Stern premieres on CD rare
items from the violinist's catalogue.  I had the LPs (naturally) and
pounced on this album as soon as it hit.  I've always liked Stern in modern
repertoire.  His LP coupling of the Barber and Hindemith concerti ranks
among my favorite albums.  On the other hand, I've never really cared for
his interpretations of the Romantic war-horses.  There's nothing wrong,
but nothing particularly revelatory either.  I suspect he goes mainly on
instinct, and like most instinctual art, success is more hit-or-miss than
with a more intellectual approach.  At least the latter gives you greater
consistency.

Stern here delivers three smashing hits and a surprising miss, all with
music found on roads less traveled-by.  Hindemith, as we know, wrote at
least one sonata for the standard orchestral instruments.  He wrote several
for the violin (including for solo violin), and this one is, I believe,
his last.  It falls well within his maturity, when he brought his musical
language to the height of its beauty.  An extraordinarily shapely work full
of interesting and powerful ideas, the sonata exploits the contrast between
martial and meditative moods.  Stern and Zakin play with great verve and
Zakin also with great delicacy.  Stern in the quieter sections does well,
but in a less studied way.  He achieves the trick of sounding as if the
music were the most natural thing in the world.  As I think about it, Zakin
may hover a bit too much in the background - whether due to the engineer or
to his own machinations, I don't know.  You can hear everything, but you
long for more of an equal partnership.

The Bloch for me represents the high-water mark of Stern's playing.  The
first sonata and Baal Shem come from roughly the same period, the early
Twenties, just a few years after Bloch's Schelomo.  Bloch doesn't get much
play these days, to me the culture's serious omission of a major composer.
I suspect the fact that he founded no school or international style has
militated against him among those who consider influence a necessary
criterion of greatness.  I admit he also has some huge howlers in his
catalogue (notably America, an Epic Rhapsody), but then again so do
Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms.  We should judge composers by their best.
There's little point in judging them by their worst, except to allow
ourselves to feel momentarily superior.  If you have a feeling for the
music of the period, the two works will immediately strike you as both
powerful and thoroughly individual.  You don't get School of Strauss,
Schrecker, and Zemlinsky, Stravinsky, Bartok, Debussy, Hindemith, or
Schoenberg.  It's not even an individual dialect of an established
language, but really a new language in its own right.  The first violin
sonata is, according to me, one of the great works of the century, and very
few know it.  It opens with a wallop: savage, violent, and sensuous at the
same time.  Unlike Bloch's best-known works, there's nothing particularly
"Jewish" about it.  Indeed, the music seems to sing of a place and time
older than Judaism.  From the view of compositional technique, it's a
wonder - lots of little cells combining and recombining into new themes
and somehow these aggregates related to one another in sonata form - but
technique isn't what hits you first.  You can enjoy this piece without
knowing sonata from sonar.  It's the passion of it that grabs you and
doesn't let go.

Bloch responded to his publisher's request to write some short pieces for
the violin with Baal Shem.  The scale may be smaller than in the sonata,
but the emotional impact strikes almost as hard, way beyond what expects
from the length.  Bloch found his inspiration for this work in Jewish life
and finds his musical material in the form of cantorial chant and Yiddish
folk song.  Except at the end of the last movement, he avoids direct
quotation.  Elgar, once asked about folk song, replied, "I write the
folk songs of this country." Bloch here writes his own as well.  The
second movement, titled Nigun ("Improvisation" or "prayer"), is the most
elaborate.  I believe Bloch also orchestrated it, and it shows up once in
a blue moon on concert programs.  The final movement, Simchas Torah, Bloch
translates as "Rejoicing," but it is really the name of the Jewish holiday
which celebrates the Torah, the book of Jewish law.  The music is an
ecstatic dance, occasionally breaking out into full-throated ardent song.
Stern and Zakin let 'er rip.  The balance problems that slightly dim
the Hindemith have disappeared.  This is, to me, one of the classic
performances of the stereo era.  Really, if all you know of Bloch is
the magnificent Schelomo, give this CD a try.

On the other hand, the Copland disappoints big-time.  I can't say whether
it's the piece itself (I've heard only this performance) or Stern.  Since
the sonata comes from Copland's most gorgeous musical period (Appalachian
Spring, Rodeo, The Red Pony, Symphony No. 3, and so on), I strongly
suspect Stern.  The notes are there, of course, but just the notes.  Stern
misses the ardor of Copland's lyricism as well as the shape of the phrases.
In the general cluelessness, Stern's performance here reminds me of his
embarrassing recordings of the Bartok sonatas.  Copland accompanies and
supplies all the poetry and coherence of this account.  It gets a bit
frustrating.  Copland will lay open this gorgeous lyric phrase, inviting
Stern to expand and intensify, and Stern blands it up.  Surely Copland had
the clout to choose whomever he wanted.  I wonder why he chose Stern.

The sound is fine, if not spectacular.  Even the monophonically-recorded
Hindemith sounds quite good.

Steve Schwartz